Issue No. 160: The Mental Health Gym

In search of clarity, sanity, or spirituality, mindfulness is a powerful practice.

A step further, in pursuit of high performance, mastering the “mental muscle” has become yet another facet of health to optimize.

From cognitive resilience to emotional health, mental fitness is bulking up.

Mental Health Goes Mainstream

Over the past decade, Americans have acknowledged the importance of mental health.

• Pre-pandemic, one in five US adults experienced mental illness as of 2019, with many saying their needs went unmet.
• Burnout, depression, and anxiety have reached all-time highs, affecting an estimated 625M worldwide and costing over $1T in productivity every year.

As demand for affordable and accessible mental health solutions skyrocket, the mental health market is exploding, reaching a staggering $245B by 2027.

DTC tranquility. Headspace and Calm have ridden the mindfulness wave to billion-dollar valuations. Today, meditation is a wellness mainstay:

• The number of US adults who practice meditation has tripled over the last decade.
• From Chorus to MindLabs, over 2,500 new meditation apps have launched since 2015, per AppInventiv.
• Fitness and tech companies alike, including Peloton and Apple, are tapping into mindfulness.

B2B serenity. At the same time, the “Great Resignation” is accelerating, sending employers scrambling to bolster their benefits, including mental health offerings.

Emphasizing mental fitness as key for employee resilience, Calm ($2B valuation) teamed up with both Lyra Health ($4.6B valuation) and Kaiser Permanente, expanding into healthcare and helping employers create healthy workplaces.

Similarly, Headspace merged with teletherapy platform Ginger this October, forming a $3B company and expanding into B2B. Meanwhile, digital health giants like BetterUp ($4.7B valuation) and Spring Health ($2B valuation) also plan to provide coaching for corporate mental fitness.

Joining in, Modern Health raised $74M in Series D funding, propelling its value north of $1B.

Peace of mind. Mindfulness is often criticized for its lack of clinical backing, but research-backed teletherapy options are growing:

• SonderMind recently reached unicorn status with a $150M Series C and just acquired biometric data platform Qntfy to personalize mental healthcare.
• Meru Health, an online treatment program and wearable biofeedback device, secured $38M this past September.
• In June, Brightline raised $72M to boost its virtual therapy services for teens and children.

Hitting The (Emotional) Weights

The rise of mental health and mindfulness has spurred the creation of a new category — mental fitness. Distinct from solutions treating anxiety and depression, the mental fitness movement seeks to enhance, not remedy.

A 2021 survey found that 82% of global consumers now believe that mental and emotional health are as important as physical health. As more consumers adopt a holistic lens to well-being and seek to optimize performance, fresh opportunities are opening up for brands in the space.

Train your brain. Cognitive resilience is a key aspect of an athlete’s readiness to perform — particularly at the elite level.

One example: Professional basketball player Kevin Love suffered a panic attack during an NBA game in 2017. It was strange, he wrote, to feel so helpless on the court:

“In the NBA, you have trained professionals to fine-tune your life in so many areas. Coaches, trainers and nutritionists have had a presence in my life for years. But none of those people could help me in the way I needed when I was lying on the floor struggling to breathe.”

Today, Love is an investor in Coa, the world’s first “mental health gym.” Though the pandemic sidelined brick-and-mortar plans, Coa has pivoted its offerings to a digital platform, where users bulk up their “emotional” muscles.

Elsewhere, companies are partnering with athletes across digital health, blurring the line between physical and mental performance:

• Rewire Fitness just launched its first-to-market neuro performance app for athletes this September after a pre-seed funding round led by Under Armour.
• Simone Biles recently invested in teletherapy and medication platform Cerebral and is now the company’s new Chief Impact Officer.
• Nike is rolling out Mind Sets, a movement series for the mind focused on “how you feel, not what you achieve.”

Resilience for all. And for the general mental fitness seeker, a growing array of companies offer options to optimize the mind:

• Breathwork startups like Othership, Breathwrk, and Open are gaining steam.
• Muse, Core, and Zendo help meditators train with precision, tracking the brain and body with neurofeedback technology.
• AI-powered coaches like Flow Lab and Heyr offer a 24/7 approach to mental fitness.

A key target for mental fitness brands, 72% of entrepreneurs are concerned about their mental health, says Coa co-founder Dr. Emily Anhalt. It’s especially important for founders to be mentally fit, as the road for them is fraught with emotional hurdles.

“If founders make taking care of their mental health an ongoing and proactive practice, it will reverberate through their companies… strong companies take shape when emotionally fit founders are sitting at the top.”

Looking Ahead

Mental fitness offers a way for anyone to fortify their mind against modern-day stressors. While improving mental resilience is generally a good thing, there’s always the risk of taking it too far — obsession versus optimization.

But, as the mental health crisis worsens, startups who can successfully transfer mental fitness insights to consumers, however that may manifest, will always have a ready market.